Harrison West

Debra Jizi
UWRT-1102 (29)
March 2, 2016
Double Entry Journal
Citation:
Mickler, C, and UM Staudinger. "Personal Wisdom: Validation and Age-Related
Differences of a Performance Measure." Psychology and Aging. 23.4 (2008): 787-99.
Print.

Source: Quote (Page# or Paragraph #)

Responses

A self-wise person is aware of his or her

own competencies and weaknesses,
emotions, and goals and has developed a
sense of meaning in life. Pg 788

I think that a lot of people when they think of

wisdom they think of accumulating knowledge
over a life time that they can then use to
complete the NY Times crossword puzzle.
Wisdom is more complex that just knowing
random facts and I think the most important
aspect of wisdom is being self-wise. It takes
something special to be able to look into
yourself and be able to understand what
makes you the person you are. I think this is
key to being happy in life too.

Humor is an example of an important

heuristic that helps one to cope with various
difficult and challenging situations and to
learn from them at the same time. Pg 788

I think that its interesting that the mind has

these mechanisms that allow us cope with
things. Humor is the best medicine when you
are feeling down. Thatd be great if scientists
could bottle humor instead of
antidepressants. I also wonder if other
species sense humor.

Therefore, we expected negative age

differences only in the metacriteria of PW.
Pg 789

The idea that old people are wiser than others

seems not to be completely true.

Positive and negative life events may

confront a person with unexpected
situations and hinder accustomed ways of

I almost think that negative life events are the

most important aspect of someones life.
When things are good it makes us feel good

dealing with the world (Wollheim, 1984),

requiring one to adapt ones process- ing
schemes (Filipp, 1999; Tedeschi & Calhoun,
1995). Pg.788

and we are happy but that feeling eventually

fades away. When life gets tough we are
forced to look into ourselves and delve deep
into our own mind. That shapes how we are
and think about ourselves and could change
your own outlook on life.

Indeed, research has shown that more

accommodative stimulation over the life
span is associated with higher ego levels
(Helson & Roberts, 1994) and higher levels
of psychological mindedness (Helson,
Mitchell, & Moane, 1984). Pg. 788

It seems that as you get old its possible that

your age becomes an inhibiter for your
personal wisdom. I never thought of old
people as having big egos but it makes
sense. By that time you probably think that
your way of thinking is the best and everyone
else is wrong.

Thus, we expected negative age

differences for PW, and in line with earlier
findings, no age differences for GW (e.g.,
Staudinger, 1999a). Pg. 789

This is along the lines of what I was expecting

as to general wisdom.

As expected, older adults scored

significantly lower in all of the metacriteria
(see Figure 4 and Table 5). In the basic
criteria, however, there was no significant
age difference. On the contrary, older adults
even showed a tendency for higher
performance than younger adults on the
criterion self-knowledge. Pg. 794

I think that I expected older people to have a

better understanding of self-knowledge.
Theyve been alive and in their own body for
a long time so they know who they are and
what they are. Itll be interesting to see if I still
have the same understanding of myself in just
10 years time.

It seems that a medium number of events

that caused us to think about our lives
provides for the best develop- mental
context of PW-related performance.
Possibly, a large num- ber of life events are
too taxing to cope with (e.g. OHara,
Schlechte, Lewis, & Verner, 1991). Pg. 795

I think that too any life events could

overwhelm a person and not give them the
time to cope and relate things back to their
own life.

At the same time, this finding differs from

results obtained with the GW measure in our
sample and in earlier studies (e.g.,
Staudinger et al., 1994), suggesting that age
plays a stronger role in PW than in GW.
Pg.797

Overall is was really surprised by the finding

in this article. Before I believed that the older
you get the wiser you become but we learned
that that wasnt true. I think in depends how
you measure wisdom but I really liked the
measures this article used,

Summary
This source analyzes the age-related differences in personal wisdom. First the concept of
personal wisdom was characterized into five criteria, two basic criteria involving self-knowledge
and self-regulation and then three metracriterion which includes interrelating the self, selfrelativism and tolerance of ambiguity. To study the personal wisdom and age participants
participated in three sessions that tested different aspect of wisdom. The results were graded
along the lines of the five criteria of personal wisdom mentioned earlier. They found that there
was no age-related difference for the two basic criteria and found young adults scored higher on
all three metacriteria. The study concluded that the age-difference in personal wisdom was due
to the.